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A world map shows concentrations of plastic in the ocean. (Image credit: “Plastic debris in the open ocean.” Cózar et. al.)

An increasing amount of plastic has been entering our oceans since the 1980s. When researchers attempted to map all this ocean garbage, however, they found that the amount of trash floating on the water’s surface was much smaller than expected.

“These studies suggest that surface waters are not the final destination for buoyant plastic debris in the ocean,” researchers wrote in a study published on Monday, June 30, in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.